
Qass. 
Book. 



. 8 



V V 



A SERMON, 

OCCASIONED BY THE 

ASSASSINATION 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN, 



PRESIDEM OF THE UNITED STATES. 



PREACHED AT 



I 

j COVENTRY, VT., APRIL 23, 1865, 



REV. PLINY H. WHITE, 

Acting PafitOT of tbe C'ODgregatiODal Church. 



BRATTLEBORO : 

PRINTED AT THE VERMONT RECORD OFFICE. 

1866. 



Or (- 




) 



A SERMON, 



OCCASIO^'ED BY THE 



ASSASSINATION 



ABRAHAM LINCOLN, 



PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. 



PEEACHEB AT 



COVENTRY, VT., APRIL 23, 1865, 

• BY 

REV. FLINT II. WHITE, 

Acting Pastor of the Congregational Church. 



BKATTLEBORO : 

PRINTED AT THE VEEMONT KECOBD OFFICE, 

1865. 



,\a/585 



SERMON. 



il. SAMUEL, XIX: 2. — And the Victory that day was turnkd into 

MOUENIXG UNTO ALL THE PkOPLE. 



This is not the first, nor yet the second thne, that this 
nation has been called to mourn the death of its chief magis- 
trate. Twice before, and within the memory of the present 
generation, a President of the United States has been removed 
from office by that great destroyer, Death, which is no respecter 
of persons, but visits, with impartial feet, the halls of princes 
and the hovels of paupers. But ou neither of the former 
occasions was there such grief, or such cause for grief, as at 
the present time. Harrison, though revered for his private 
virtues, and honored for many and valuable services rendered 
to the country, had been in the Presidency too short a time 
to attach the nation to himself by strong ties of personal aifec- 
tion. The severity of his loss was felt mainly by the political 
party whose standard-bearer he had been, and from whose 
grasp the spoils of victory were snatched by his death. And 
Taylor, though he had been longer in office, and had rendered 
more recent and more brilliant military services, was regarded 
with high respect and implicit confidence rather than with 
ardent attachment. 

Nor was the nation, at the death either of Harrison or 
Taylor, in any such critical circumstances as to render the loss 
anything more than temporary. When the former died, a 
change of governmental policy took place — it may be for the 
worse, it may be for the better, as political opinions may hon- 
estly differ. At the death of tl^e latter, his successor carried 



ASSASSINATION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 



out the same policy which had been pursued, and the practical 
results to the nation were the same as if Taylor had survived 
to the end of his term. There was nothing in the manner of 
the death of either of the former Presidents to aggravate the 
national grief. They died peacefully in their beds, in the 
ordinary course of nature, each of them having attained nearly 
the three score years and ten, which are the allotted bounds of 
human life. 

But the calamity which has now befallen the nation as much 
transcends in magnitude and severity those that preceded it, as 
it differs from them in all the attending circumstances. As 
njuch revered for personal virtues, as much honored for public 
services, as either of the other Presidents, he was beloved with 
an intensity of personal affection such as was accorded to nei- 
ther of them, nor could be, since neither of them possessed 
that strong personal magnetism by which he drew men to him 
and grappled them to him as with hooks of steel. Tears flowed 
from eyes unused to weep, and the very children cried in the 
street, when the dismal tidings was made known. History 
affords no record of national grief so intense at the loss of 
a ruler, save when Henry IV. of France wbs assassinated 
by Ravillac, and William the Silent shot by Geerardt. And 
when the news shall be conveyed to the millions at the South, 
to whom he was not only " Father Abraliam," but the Moses 
of their deliverance from worse than Egyptian bondage, the 
Messiah for whom they had longed and prayed through many 
years of oppression and suffering, their mourning will be 
deeper and more painful than ours, a mourning " as the 
mourning of Hadadrimmon in the valley of Megiddon," when 
the Jews bewailed their good king Josiah. The critical cir- 
cumstances of the nation render the President's death yet more 
deplorable. Just on the eve of peace, as we hope, but with a 
war of ideas and opinions still to pass through, how can we 
spare that patriotic heart and that sagacious head, whose ut- 
terances have never failed to be a nucleus around which all 



ASSASSINATION OV ABRAHAM LINCOLN, 



I 



conflicting opinions have chrystalized into harmony ? Who 
can say, as he has always said, just what the people would 
have said, and do just what the people would have done ? 

To fill our cup of bitterness to the brim, the President has 
died suddenly, violently, by the hand of an assassin. Had 
he died an ordinary death — had we learned, day by day, of 
the slow but certain progress of disease — had we been allowed 
to nerve ourselves up to receive the dreaded intelligence, it 
would have come to us with less crushing force. But those 
few fatal words, — " The President Assassinated," — fell upon 
us like a thunderbolt from a cloudless sky, so stunning us with 
the violence of the blow, that we heard as though we heard 
not. It had not occurred to us that he could die such a death. 
That he was mortal, we knew ; that he would die, we feared ; 
and our prayers had gone up continually that his life might be 
spared to finish the work which he had so well begun. Had 
he been murdered at Richmond, it would not much have sur- 
prised us ; but when he returned unharmed from that city, we 
dismissed the transient fears that had been aroused. But in 
the very capital of the nation, in the very midst of his friends, 
in the presence of his family, the murderer did the work of 
death. That nothing might be lacking in the poignancy of 
our grief, it came to us while we were in the topmost height 
of exultation. Hardly had the joyous peals with which the 
bells announced the fall of Richmond and the surrender of 
Lee died upon our ears, when they were saluted with the 
melancholy knell that bewailed the nation's bereavement. — 
Such a transition from the delirium of joy to the delirium of 
wo, has had no parallel since that event in Judea, when the 
disciples, who, on Sunday, had accompanied Christ into Jeru- 
salem, amid the thronging multitudes that cried " Hosanna to 
the Son of David," saw him, on Friday, put to death by 
wicked hands, and all their hopes buried with him in the 
sepulchre. 



ASSASSINATION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN, 



Let it be our endeavor, to-day, (1) to pay some tribute, 
however inadequate, to the memory of our murdered Presi- 
dent, (2) to seek such consolation as we may for our afHiction, 
and (3) to consider our present duties. 

I. The President has filled up the measure of his useful- 
ness, secured a permanent and honorable place in the history 
of the world, and, as we have good reason to believe, has se- 
cured a title to the rewards of the righteous in the world to 
come. 

For him, personally, we have, then, no occasion to mourn. 
"We read his doom without a sigh" on his account, 

"For he is freedom's now and fame's, 
One of the few, the immortal names, 
That were not born to die." 

No assassin can murder his reputation, nor deprive us of 
the melancholy satisfaction of holding in everlasting remem- 
brance what he was and what he did. He was the child of 
American institutions, and more than any other of our Pres- 
idents — perhaps more than any other of our eminent pub- 
lic men — he illustrated the power of those institutions to ele- 
vate mankind. Born in lowliness and poverty, his youth 
spent in constant and severe toil, with but scanty educational 
advantages, without a single influential friend to assist him, 
the way to usefulness and eminence was opened before him by 
the spirit of our free institutions ; and by force of his own vir- 
tue, ability and industry, he rose from his original humble po- 
sition to a place where he was the peer of kings and emperors 
in rank, and more than the peer of most of them in all that 
makes rank any thing more than an empty bubble. 

His life, prior to his accession to the Presidency has been 
too well made known by many published biographies, and all 
that he has said and done since then is too fresh and too fast 
in our minds, to make it necessary or even permissible to go 
jnto a detailed account of his career. It is enough to say, 



ASSASSINATION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 



that -whenever he has been tried he has never been found 
wantmg ; never wanting in abiUty adequate to the emergency, 
never wanting in fidelity to truth and right. His ablest op- 
ponents at the forum, on the platform, and in the halls of Con- 
gress, were compelled to acknowledge his intellectual power ; 
his bitterest enemies never dared to call in question his per- 
sonal or political honesty. Some of his predecessors in the 
presidential chair surpassed him in learning, in eloquence, in 
diplomacy, in mere ordinary state-craft, but none of them sur- 
passed him — none but Washington equalled him — in that rare 
combination and harmony of the faculties that "gave the world 
assurance of a man" equal to a crisis for which we know not 
who of his predecessors would have been found equal. His 
equipoise was never disturbed. Adverse circumstances did 
not depress him, success did not elate him. In every office 
he has held, he has proved himself " honest, capable, and 
faithftil to tho constitution ;" and in the Presidency, he 

"Hath bome his faculties so meok, hath been 
So clear in his great office, that his virtues 
Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against 
The deep damnation of his taking off." 

Some of the elements that entered into his composition de- 
serve to be noticed somewhat at length. The striking charac- 
teristic of his mind was common sense. He possessed it to 
such an extraordinary degree that it answered all the purposes 
of profound learning or brilliant genius , and sometimes availed 
when neither learning nor genius would have] sufficed. It 
penetrated to the very core of every subject with which he had 
to do, and no jugglery of words nor sleight of sophistry could 
make the worse appear to him the better reason. How tho- 
roughly did he, in a single sentence, expose the fallacy of the 
" great doctrine of popular sovereignty," as advocated during 
the pendency of the Nebraska Bill in 1854. " I admit," said 
he, " that the emigrant to Kansas and Nebraska is competent 
to govern himself, but I deny his right to govern any other per- 



8 .\<6ASSL:^\'ih>S OF ABUAIIAM Ll.sCuLX, 



son without that person's consent." And in how many similcii 
sentences, spoken or written since his accession to the Presi- 
dency, has his common sense commended itself to the common 
sense of the people, and made him at once the author of popu- 
lar opinion and the organ through which it expressed itself. — 
It was this quality which, in his memorable letter to Horace 
Greeley, (dated 22d August, 1862,) enabled him to define, 
with a clearness like that of a sunbeam shooting through chaos, 
his own policy concerning slavery, just where ninety-nine 
hundredths of all the people in the loyal States desired to find 
it, midway between " those who would not 'save the Union un- 
less they could at the same time save slavery," and " those 
who would not save the Union unless they could at the same 
time destroy slavery." It was this quality which gave, even 
to his most formal state papers, such an indescribable relish 
and raciness that we could not content ourselves with reading 
them once, but were irresistibly drawn to them again and 
again, till many of their pregnant phrases became " famihar 
to our lips as house-hold words." Always quaint and homely, 
sometimes approximating closely to the uncouth, it always 
carried the people with it, and, like their " sober, second 
thought," was seldom wrong, and always effectual. 

SimpUcity was a marked feature of his character. The 
burden of years had begun to rest upon him, professional and 
political life had done their utmost to deaden his sensibilities, 
public cares and anxieties had ploughed deep furrows on his 
face, but his heart was a child's heart still. Whether he were 
talking to the children in a Sabbath School, or receiving a 
nomination to the Presidency with the remark, " there's a 
little woman down at our house who will Uke to hear that," or 
listening patiently to a recital of the wrongs of a humble sol- 
dier, or walking unheralded and almost unattended through the 
streets ef Richmond, he was everywhere and always the same 
plain, unaffected, unostentatious man. Pomp and parade had 
iio charms for him. If he took part in any state pageant, it 



ASSASSINATION OF AEllAIIAM LINCOLN. 



was not for love of show, but out of regard to the wishes and 
expectations of others. Though he was the principal actor in a 
drama upon which the eyes of the world were fixed, he was aa 
unconcerned in regard to his position and drapery, as though 
he had been a mere attendant coming temporarily upon the 
stage to help make up an assemblage. His simplicity was 
sometimes more than remarkable, it was sublime. Not Ceesar 
returning to Rome in triumph after the conquest of the Gauls, 
not Napoleon entering Paris to receive the imperial crown, 
presents a spectacle of such moral sublimity as President 
Lincoln entering Richmond, with no pomp or circumstance, 
as a private citizen and not as the foremost man in the nation, 
receiving and returning the greetings alike of generals and of 
soldiers, of white men and of black — the man of the people 
in the midst of the people-. 

The President was a man of inflexible will. Andrew Jack- 
son himself, the synonym of inflexibility, was not harder to be 
bent than he. He had, however, none of the dogged obstinacy 
which sometimes made Jackson as disagreeable to his friends 
as he was intolerable to his enemies. His will was not mere 
wilfulness. He did not adhere to an opinion just because he 
once expressed it, nor maintain a position only because he had 
taken it. Rather did he adhere to an opinion, because, hav- 
ing thoroughly investigated the subject by the best lights he 
could procure, and well weighed what was to be considered 
on this side and on that, he had come to the conscientious 
conviction that his opinion was right. Planting himself 
upon this conclusion, he stood immoveable. This wsa one 
prime element of his power. " All things are possible to 
him who wills," and the man of unconquerable will succeeds in 
a thousand places where one of infirm purpose fails. It was 
will that carried the army of the Potomac from Washington to 
Richmond, and beyond ; will, which, having once " proposed 
to fight it out on that line if it took all Summer," fought all 
Summer, and Fall, and Winter, till the month had nearly re- 
turned again, and the stubborn foe was compelled to surren- 



10 ASSASSINATION OF AIUIAIIAM LINCOLN. 



(Icr to a will more stubborn than his own. It was the inflexi. 
ble will of President Lincoln that gave steadiness and firmness 
to his whole character, carried him straight forward to the 
accomplishment of his great purpose, and kept him undisturbed 
by the excitement of the times, calm under the sorest provoca- 
tions, and patient alike of the inconsiderate advice of friends 
and the abuse of enemies. 

But the time would fail us to make a thorough analysis of 
the character of the beloved and lamented President, or to 
narrate the official acts by which he has gained the admiration 
and love of the present generation, and entitled himself to be 
honored by all the generations that shall come after us. It 
would be unjust, however, not to mention the crowning act of 
his life, the bestowal of freedom upon four milUons of slaves ; 
an act by which he permanently identified himself, not merely 
with the history of the United States, but with the history of 
the world and of human progress. Hardly once in an age, 
hardly once in a cycle of ages, does any man have the oppor- 
tunity to do for mankind what he has done. He could by no 
possibihty achieve a higher distinction, and having achieved 
that, having 

" mounted fame's ladder so high, 
From the round at the top he has stepped to the sky." 

For we have no reason to doubt that the President was not 
only an honest man, and an ardent patriot, but a sincere Chris- 
tian. The Bible, which his pious mother taught him to read, 
was a book which he never neglected. How faithfully he 
studied it, and how thoroughly he was imbued with its spirit, let 
his last inaugural address bear witness ; " a state paper which, 
for political weight, moral dignit}^, and unaffected solemnity, 
has had no equal in our time." He recognized an overruhng 
Providence, and relied upon Providence for guidance and sui> 
port. He knew the value of prayer, was the first of our Pres- 
idents to ask the prayers of the people in his behalf, and has 
been the subject of more numerous and more fervent prayers 
ihan any other of our rulers. Within the last year, the accu,- 



ASSA3SIXATI0N OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 11 

mulatecl influence of maternal instruction, biblical stuclj, do- 
mestic afflictions, public responsibilities, and private prajers, 
have been, as we hope, sanctified by the Holy Spirit, and 
made the means of his conversion ; and we have his own frank 
and explicit testimony in the words — " I do love Jesus." Let 
us rejoice even in our sorrow, that he was not unprepared to 
die, and that the Jesus whom he loved has received him to a 
world where " the wicked cease from troubling, and where the 
weary are at rest." 

II. Let us see how this event stands related to some of the 
great doctrines revealed in the Scriptures, " that 'so' we 'may' 
have strong consolation." 

The assassination of the President did not take place without 
the permission of God. He, without whom not even a sparrow 
falls to the ground, surely does not allow^ the ruler of a nation 
to be taken away without his notice. This war, with its de- 
velopments and results, has impressed upon us the truth as it 
was never impressed before, that God " doeth according to his 
will among the inhabitants of the earth," and constantly exer- 
cises a controlling superintendence of all human affairs. By 
the death of the President, the same truth is urged upon our 
attention. He was slain by wicked hands, but not without 
the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, who had 
from the beginning determined his days, numbered his months, 
and appointed his bounds that he could not pass. Man is im- 
mortal till he has finished the work which God assigns to him- 
The President was safe against death till he had done his ap- 
pointed work. He passed safely through Baltimore on his way 
to the capital, he lived at Washington unharmed by those who 
have thirsted for his blood all these years, he went to Rich- 
mond and returned unhurt, because God had something still 
for him to do. He was raised up by God to liberate the slaves 
from bondage, and deliver the nation from rebellion, as really 
and as evidently as Washington was raised up to set our fathers 
free from British oppression. His own purposes were set aside 
and God's purposes substituted for his, that these ends might 



12 ASSASSINATION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 



be accomplished. He himself had a profound conviction that 
this was his specific work, and a strorfg presentiment that when 
it should be accomplished nothing more remained for him to do. 
" I shall not outlast the rebellion," was his language. He 
lived to do his work. He lived till the national flag, first low- 
ered by compulsion of rebel guns at Fort Sumter, had been 
restored with honor to its place, " its arms and trophies stream- 
ing in their original luster, not a stripe erased or polluted, nor 
a single star obscured." He lived to see the triumph of the 
national arms, to recognize the sure signs of approaching 
peace, and to realize that his cares, and trials, and toils, had 
borne abundant fruit for the advancement of freedom, for the 
honor of the country, and for the glory of God. He was per- 
mitted to die, because his mission was accomplished. He was 
assassinated on the anniversary of the crucifixion of Christ, and 
like him — with reverence be it said — he had finished the work 
which the Father gave him to do. 

Not only did the death of the President, at this time and 
in this manner, enter into God's plan for the administration 
of affairs on earth, but He will overrule it for good, for greater 
good than could have been secured by his continued life. It 
is a familiar theological truth, that a system of moral govern- 
ment,,in which sin shall exist, is the necessary means of the 
greatest good ; God making the wrath, and wickedness, and 
weakness of man to praise Him, by overruling them all to His 
own glory and the good of the world. Never has any truth 
been so conspicuously and forcibly illustrated as this has been, 
in the long conflict between slavery and freedom, culminating 
in the great rebeUion. Not one of the movements for extend- 
ing and perpetuating slavery has failed to become the means 
of restricting and destroying it. They who set those move- 
ments on foot meant them for evil, but God meant them for 
good. 

"* * * He from heaven's height 

All these 'their' motions vain sees and derides, 

Not more almighty to lesist 'their' might, 

Than wise to frustrate all 'their' plots and wiles." 



ASSASSINATION OF ABllAItAM LINCOLN. lo 



The enactment of tlie Kansas-Nebraska law, by -wliich it 
was sought to extend the area of slavery North of the Missouri 
Compromise line, opened a way by which the area of freedom 
might be extended South of that line. The murderous assault 
upon Senator Sumner for his exposure of the barbarism of 
slavery, made abolitionists of thousands, whom Garrison, and 
Phillips, and Parker, could never have influenced at all in that 
direction, who, inded, would never have listened at all to the 
talk of such men. The rebellion itself, which attempted to 
maintain by force of arms what could not be maintained by 
force of reason, and to establish a government having as its 
corner-stone the principle that slavery is the natural condition 
of the negro, has been made- the means of destroying slavery, 
and establishing more firmly than ever the great political 
truth that all men are born free and equal. Even the victo- 
ries which slavery has been permitted to achieve on the battle- 
field, have only served to render its final defeat more certain 
and more fatal. Had the rebellion been crushed in ninety 
days from its first oujtbreak, slavery could not have been 
crushed. It would only have been exasperated, and it would 
have nursed its wrath and its strength, till another and more 
favorable opportunity. God permitted it to triumph tempora- 
rily, but overruled its victories to its complete and perpetual 
overthrow. 

Let us not doubt that He who has hitherto overruled for good 
all the evil designs and endeavors of slavery, will in like man- 
ner overrule this its last and most atrocious act. Tho assas- 
sination of the President was not the work of an individual. — 
It was the spirit of slavery that fired his heart and nerved his 
hand ; the same spirit which has murdered thousands of others, 
which has tortured women and children, which has mangled 
the bodies of the dead and desecrated the sanctuary of the 
grave, which has deliberately and systematically starved its 
prisoners to death, which butchered in cold blood the garrison 
of Fort Pillow, which has never shrunk from any crime how- 
ever black, nor any infamy however damning. If this deed 



14 A.'^SA.'^SIXATIO.X OF AJJKAHA?^! LI.VCOLX. 



■\vas not devised by the leaders in the rebelUon, nor sanctioned 
by them in advance, we may l)e very sure they will now sanc- 
tion it by faihng to disavow it. When did slavery ever disa- 
vow any deed, however atrocious, that was done in its behalf? 
One of its agents, some years ago, almost murdered a Senator 
of the United States in his seat, for having assailed the institu- 
tion. Did slavery disavow the crime ? Nay, verily, it gloried 
in it ! It lavished its praises upon the would-be assassin ; his 
return to South Carolina Avas a triumphal procession ; men 
split their throats with shouts of applause, women smiled upon 
him, mothers named their infants for him, and his constituents 
re-elected him to Congress by an almost unanimous vote. Slave- 
ry will never disavow this assassination. If it does not openly 
exult in it, if it does not ring its bells, and fire its guns, and 
illuminate its houses to express its approbation and delight, it 
will be because slavery is less malignant, and less devihsh in 
its malignity, to-day, than it lias for these many years been 
showing itself to be. But its joy will be turned into sorrow. 
" Woe unto you that laugh now, for ye shall mourn and weep." 
God has no attributes which can approve or prosper an}'- effort 
for the perpetuation of human bondage. By every one of his 
attributes he is pledged to destroy slavery sooner or later, and 
while it is permitted to continue. He will overrule all its evil 
deeds for the good of the world and for His own glory. How 
He will do so in the present instance, we must wait for time 
to make manifest. The signs of the times already indicate one 
way in which this will be done, and that will be considered 
more at length in a subsequent part of the discourse. 

III. What are our duties in the present distressing emer- 
gency ? 

First of all, to submit with Christian resignation to the 
chastisement with which our Father in Heaven has visited ns. 
Philosophy requires us to be patient and resigned under every 
affliction, because it is useless to murmur at that which is un- 
alterably fixed. Religion takes higher ground, and bids us 
be resigned, because all things are ordered by God, in infinite 



^ 



ASSASSINATION or AHllAIIAM LINCOLN. lo 



^visdom and love. What He -wills is always best. It may not 
seem best to those -whose purposes it th-warts, -whose hopes it 
blasts, -whose expectations it disappoints. Its results for the 
immediate time, or -within the naro-w space directly aiFectedby 
it, may appear anything but good. But He regards not the 
present time only, but all time, and all eternity, past and fu- 
ture ; not any limited region of this Avorld, but the whole 
universe of worlds ; not one nation, -which is as " a drop of 
the bucket," but all tLe nations of the earth, and all the intel- 
lioient inhabitants of the universe. Taking all these into con- 
sideration, and seeing how they would be affected by the con- 
tinued hfe or the death of the President, He saw that the best 
good of the whole would be secured by his death. And who 
are we, that we should wish to reverse the decrees of Infinite 
Wisdom ? While we bow beneath the chastening rod, let us 
not forget whose hand it is that wields it, nor fail to say from 
our inmost hearts, " It is the Lord ; He hath done what seem- 
eth good in his sight." " The judgments of the Lord are right- 
eous altogether." Nor let us fail to be grateful even, for the 
belief which we are permitted to cherish, that this chastise- 
ment, like the many others visited upon us, is for our disci- 
pline and correction, not for our destruction. So may our 
sorrow be made the means of our greater and enduring joy. 

Our second duty is to adjust ourselves in our proper relations 
to the new President, and give him our confidence, our sup- 
port, and our co-operation in the work of closing up the rebel- 
lion, punishing its guilty authors, and reconstructing the Union. 
We have reason to rejoice and be thankful that the wisdom of 
our forefathers devised a plan of government which provides 
for an emergency like the present. Abraham Lincoln is 
dead, but the President lives. "There was not an interregnum 
of a single day. For only a few hours the nation was destitute 
of a constitutional head, and through that brief space the 
wheels of government moved steadily by force of their acquired 
momentum. Even the finances of the country, the most sen- 
sitive part of its concerns, experienced only a slight and tern- 



1() ASSASSINATION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 



porarj derangement. Neither the civil nor the mlUtary move- 
ments of the government are apparently endangered in the 
slightest degree by the transfer of executive power. Andrew 
Johnson is our President, and to him we now owe every duty 
which we owed to Abraham Lincoln. 

Confidence is indeed a plant of slow growth, and, like affec- 
tion, must bo won before it can be bestowed. It can not be 
denied that our confidence in his fitness, even for the subordin- 
ate place to which he was elected, was seriously impaired by 
his drunkenness on the 4th of March, and that it requires some 
effort to confide in his fitness for the higher office to which he 
was not elected. But the charity which " covers the multi- 
tude of sins," will not hesitate to regard with leniency that 
single shameful act, of which he has already repented, and 
against the repetition of which he has solemly pledged himself. 
His previous career as a man and a statesman, furnishes such 
a guarantee of his honesty, patriotism, and ability, as justifies 
the sure expectation that he will show himself equal to the 
responsibilities of his new position. Nor are there wanting 
some special reasons for giving him our entire confidence. 

He has been called of God to the Presidency ; and in that 
caliing the same infinite wisdom and goodness were exercised 
as in permitting the removal of his predecessor. Moses died 
without leading the children of Israel into the promised land ; 
Moses, like whom " there arose not a prophet since in Israel," 
but Joshua, who was called of God to succeed him, accomplished 
the work which he left unfinished. Abraham Lincoln has 
died and left us still wandering in the wilderness, nor have we 
any hope that there will arise another President like him, and 
yet Andrew Johnson may be the Joshua to finish the incom- 
pleted work. He wag not elected to the Presidency by the 
people. He did not reseive a single vote for that oflSce. He 
could not, by any possibility, have secured even a nomination. 
But while Abraham Lincoln was the choice of the people, 
Andrew Johnson was the choice of God. God is wiser than we 
are. He foresaw what would be the exigencies of the country 



ASSASSINATION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. IT 

during the Presidential term, and who was the best qualified t© 
meet those exigencies. The vory fact that He has permitted 
one President to be removed and has put another in his place, 
demands that our confidence shall be given to the new Presi- 
dent. If we can not trust God to choose our Chief Magistrate 
for us, whom canwe trust ? 

In one particular, the President has already shown himself 
entitled to our utmost confidence — his settled determination to 
administer exact justice to the guilty authors of the rebellion. 
The idea of justice has almost died out of the American mind, 
and instead of it we see a sickly "philanthropy" which sym- 
pathizes with the guilty rather than with the innocent, which 
rejoices whenever a criminal escapes from deserved punishment, 
and which, even if the assassin of Abraham Lincoln were to 
be arrested and convicted, would think it a thousand pities to 
hang him. There are those Avho look upon the rebellion as a 
mistake instead of a crime, and would allow every man who has 
been engaged in it, whether as leader Or follower, to go unharm- 
ed, if only he can be made to see his mistake, and desist from 
putting his mistaken notions into practice. While there is no 
reason to suppose that the late President had any such views as 
those, it is quite sure that if there were any weakness in his 
character, it was his almost morbid tenderness of heart, which 
prompted him to pardon rather than to punish, however richly 
punishment might b.e deserved. There are not a few men to- 
day in the penitentiaries or on the Dry Tortugas, who would 
long ago have suffered death but for his clemency. And there 
was reason to fear, it was feared, that the generosity and mag- 
nanimity, which are so becoming in the hour of victory, might 
be carried to such excess that he would proclaim a general am- 
nesty upon the sole and easy condition of the rebels laying down 
their arms. 

But the idea of justice is a controlling idea in Andrew John- 
son's mind. He will be a magistrate " not bearing the sword 
in vain." His opinion of treason and of the punishment due t© 
it are clearly defined, and was, long since, forcibly expressed. 
Before the war commenced, while as yet Floyd, and Thomp- 
son^ and their traitorous coadjutors in the Cabinet and else- 



18 ASSASSINATION OP ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 



where, were only miking preparations for it, he spoke in the 
Senate Chamber as follows : 

" I would have them arrested, and if convicted, within the 
meaning and scope of the Constitution, I would execute them. 
Treason must be punished. Its enormity, and the extent and 
depth of the offence, must be made known. The time is not 
distant, if this government is preserved, its constitution obeyed, 
and its laws executed in every department, when something of 
this kind must be done." 

Four years of observation and experience have deepened and 
strengthened the convictions thus expressed, and just before his 
accessiom to the Presidency, he again spoke on the same sub- 
ject ; 

" I am in favor of leniency," said he, " but evil-doers ought 
to be punished. Treason is the highest crime known in the 
category of crimes, and for him who is guilty of it, wlio is wil- 
ling to lift his impious hand against the authority of the nation, 
I would say death is too easy a punishment. To the honest 
boy, to the deluded man, who have t>cen deceived into the rebel 
ranks, I would extend leniency. I would say, Return to your 
allegiance, renew your support to the government, and become 
good citizens. Bat the leaders I ivouldhang.'''' 

Noble words ! words worthy of a statesman who knows that 
mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent, and realizes that 
the naagistrate is " the minister of God, a revenger to execute 
wrath upon him that doeth evil." Words uttered not in passion 
or vindictiveness, but as the expression of a solemn duty, due* 
alike to God and man, to do just what the Constitution and the 
laws of the land require to be done to those who violate the 
Constitution and laws ; just that, no more, no less. Words 
which entitle him who speaks them to the confidence of every 
one that loves justice and hates treason. Yes, if Abraham 
Lincoln must die, thank God for Andrew Johnson. Let him 
translate those words into actions, and he \>ill secure for the 
country a permanent peace, by ridding it of the wicked men 
who caused the rebellion, and by deterring all others from fol- 
lowing their evil example. If they do not deserve to die on the 
scaffold, history tells of no criminals who were worthy of such 
a death. If hemp were not foreordained for the hanging of 
such as they, then was hemp created in vain. If such men as 
Davis, Stephens, Wise, Hunter, and iheir associates in treason. 



.ASSASSINATION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 10 



•are permitted to "''clie the common death of all men, or if they 
■be visited after the visitation of all men," let us have no more 
hanging of assassins, and highway robbers, and pirates ; let us 
abolish not only the scaffold, but the prison and the peniten- 
tiary, and let every man do as be will. For if cnraes of such 
magnitude and atr»city as theirs go unpunished, how dare we 
punish such minor offences as murder, robbery, and piracy 1 

Andrew Jackson is said to have expressed regret that he 
did not cause John C. Calhoun to be hung for treason. It is 
doubtful whether the moral sense of the nation were not even 
then too debauched to sanction such a punishment, but if it had 
been inflicted upon Calhoun, H'ayne, Hamilton, and other South 
Carolina statesmen, it would have crushed the egg of nullifica- 
tion out of which has been hatched the viper of secession. Now 
that the viper has attained its full growth and well nigh stung 
the country to death, let its head be bruised so thoroughly that 
its power for mischief shall be completely and forever destroyed. 
If the snake be merely "scotched; not killed,'^ future genera- 
tions may feel its poisoneus fangs piercing deeper and more fa- 
tally than the present has felt them. Believing that Andrew 
Johnson will do justice to all traitors who come within his pow- 
er, let us give him our confidence and our hearty support ; and 
by so much as he visits upon the rebel leaders a sorer retribu- 
tion than they would have experienced at the hpinds of Abraham 
Lincoln, by so much will God overrule the great evil for 
greater good. 

While doing this, it is our equally insperative duty, not to 
depend upon the President nor upon any other statesman as our 
sure reliance for deliverance from national troubles. With 
what emphasis and power does the death which we lament to- 
day, enforce the injunction of God's word : — " Put not your 
trust in princes, nor in the son of man in whom there is no 
help." The dealings of Providence with us, through the Avhtle 
course of the war, have been enforcing this lesson. But we 
have been slow to learn it, How many generals have we set 
up as the idols of the hour, and trusted that they would speedily 
conquer a peace, only to have our idols dethroned and our 
hopes disappointed ! With what strong assurance have we re- 
lied upon Abraham Lincoln as the man to save us ! We 



20 ASSASSINATION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 



have studied his policy, we have watched his line of conduct, w6 
have looked to him for deliverance. Have we not looked to 
him too much and to God too little ? Have we not given him 
so large a place in our aflfections, that God has not had the 
place to which he is entitled ? If so, how great has been our 
sio, and how terribly has it been rebuked ! '• Cease ye from 
man whose breath is in his nostrils, for wherein is he to be ac- 
counted of?" Give Andrew Johnson your confidence, your 
support, your co-operation ; but let your only trust be in " the 
Lord which made heaven and earth." " Cursed be the man 
which trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose 
heart departeth from the Lord :" but " blessed is the man that 
trusteth in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is." 

Wo owe another duty, more private than any of these, the 
duty of tender sympathy for the poor, sorrow-stricken woman, 
to whom the national loss is a personal bereavement. If we 
■who knew him only as a statesman feel his death so keenly, 
what anguish of soul must be hers who mourns for her husband 
and the father of her children ! She can now sympathize, as 
never before, with the tens of thousands of widows made such 
by this wicked rebellion. Let her have our sympathy and our 
prayers, as she goes to her desolate home at the West'; there to 
realize, as she does not yet realize, the full severity of her be- 
reavement, and to know something of the bitter grief which 
filled the heart of Naomi, when she said to her former neighbors, 
upon her return to Bethlehem — " I went out full, and the Lord 
hath brought me home again empty. Call me not Naomi, call 
me Mara : for the Almighty hath dealt very bitterly with me." 

And now our heavy task is done. Peace to the ashes of the 
martyred President. Let them rest in the capital of his adopt- 
ed State till the morning of the resurrection, then to be fash- 
ioned into a body like unto Christ's glorious body. Honor to 
the memory of the second Father of his Country, Let it be 
cherished till time shall be no more, by the people for whom he 
lived and labored, and for whom he died. 

And to Him who causeth light to shine out of darkness, and 
bringeth good out of evil, be glory forever. Amen. 



'■'('. 



